Spring project
Spring (formerly known as TA Spring or Total Annihilation: Spring), is a a full 3D open source RTS engine originally created by the Swedish Yankspankers. http://www.rebell.at/ Interview with TA-Spring Development-Team. The core game engine is released under the GPL License; however, the prepackaged mod that comes with the standard installation requires that one own a copy of TA to legally play it. There is, however, an official release which uses fully free content, and there are a number of mods, both in development and released, that are also completely free to use. Spring is being developed by the Swedish Yankspankers and the Spring community. The initial goal was to have the game run the mods and 3rd party units from Total Annihilation. This goal is now mostly complete, and the project has moved on to including additional features. The game is mainly focused around multiplayer games over the Internet or a LAN connection. There are currently no single player campaigns or missions, although there is some basic support for this through Lua scripting. There are also many skirmish AIs under development, allowing for offline play or extra players in an online game. One skirmish AI, AAI, ships in the game package. The source code TA Spring's source code, licenced under the GNU General Public License, is primarily written in the C++ programming language with the exception of the lobby which is written in Delphi, and the LAN game server which is written in Java. The C++ code structure is written in an object-oriented manner and is documented to some extent using doxygen standards. However most of the code has no proper documentation yet. The official source code package includes project files for various IDEs and building tools, including SCons, KDevelop, Microsoft Visual C++ 7.0/8.0, and XCode. Multiplayer support Spring is designed to be used for online multiplayer matches. It uses a deterministic game simulation which is executed on all game clients. Only the user commands are sent to other players, which prevents any active cheating. Spring is the first rts game to correctly implement this synchronized system on multiple platforms. AMD-64 and i386 platforms are supported for multiplayer on Linux, and i386 on windows. Features Some of the defining features of this game are: * Large battles, with support for up to 5000 units per player (How playable this is depends on the cpu's that are running the game) * Unlimited resources * Ability to handle "large" maps. * Fully 3D camera view, allowing for complete freedom of movement. * Realistic 3D trajectories for projectile and missile weapons * Fully 3D air combat * Detailed terrain. Some maps are directly exported from terrain rendering tools such as L3DT and Terragen. * Deformable terrain (example) * Compatible with unit files from Total Annihilation, allowing 3rd party units to easily be moved into Spring. * Up to max 16 players online : latest spring version... (edited by Miki) Community Spring has a small, close-knit community that evolved from the original Total Annihilation community. At any given time, one can find many (150 to 200) users online on the main Spring server. The more experienced users tend to know each other. A rank system is maintained to demonstrate the experience of its members. The future TA Spring continues to grow and improve. Planned features include: * A new unit scripting format to replace the outdated COB scripting language used by TA. A new unit format has already been made, replacing the outdated .3do, by adding UV mapping, self illumination, and better support for team colours. * A new map format, similar to Warcraft III's map format. * A totally reworked GUI. * Dynamic explosion, weapon and unit lighting. A "sequel" of sorts is also in production, currently known by the internal title "Command Engine."http://www.osrts.info References External links *Spring homepage. *Spring forums. *Spring on BerliOS. *IRC Channel: #sy on irc.quakenet.org *FileUniverse Spring section. *Unknown-Files (FileUniverses' Lead mirror) Spring Section. *Personal review of TA Spring. Category:Total Annihilation Category:Open source games Category:Free, open source strategy games Category:Fanmade computer game remakes and sequels Category:Windows games Category:Linux games Category:Mac OS games Category:Real-time strategy computer games Category:2006 computer and video games de:TA Spring fr:TA Spring